


love always wakes the dragon

by dygonilly



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, F/F, Inspired by Richard Siken, Introspection, Magical Realism, Mild Sexual Content, Nature Magic, Rule 63, Strangers to Lovers, waxing poetic about the ocean, wen junhui as a plot device
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:55:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25996363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dygonilly/pseuds/dygonilly
Summary: A snow storm is simmering on the doorstep.Minghao lets it inside.“Hello,” says the stranger, hesitating on the threshold. Her hair falls cleanly to her shoulders like sheets of ice, glacier-blue to match her eyes. Despite the winter in her magic, she smiles warmly at Minghao. “I’m Soonyoung.”
Relationships: Kwon Soonyoung | Hoshi/Xu Ming Hao | The8
Comments: 11
Kudos: 71





	love always wakes the dragon

**Author's Note:**

> I felt like writing something a little different, and with women, so I did.
> 
> title is taken from 'Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out' by Richard Siken. that should give you enough of an idea of what this is.

In the crumbling light of dusk in spring, the forest is asleep, and the ocean is too far away to hear. 

Minghao keeps a jar of salt water on her bedside table like a reminder that she could go back, if she wanted to. In the middle of the night it glows, phosphorescent plankton building galaxies behind the glass, keeping her company. She could charm it to sound like a seashell, if seashells weren’t carcasses of homes that have outlived their use. 

Sleep comes slowly when the weather is warm. Minghao has been keeping all the windows thrown open and the curtains closed, if only to watch them flutter in the breeze. Her bedroom faces the treeline and the moon’s well-worn path downwards. It’s waxing tonight, half-full. It doesn’t make much of a difference to the magic thrumming outwards from Minghao’s core like a radiator. She has the earth and the soil for that. The sun and the ferns and the overgrown bluebells that she keeps on every windowsill no matter the season. 

Junhui says the moon gives her more than she thinks, that she should be more grateful. Junhui hasn’t been around for a while. 

“Houses like these don’t need visitors,” he said. 

“And what of the witches inside?”

“They know where to find me.”

Minghao traces the pad of her finger down the side of the jar. She thinks of waning tides and white-yellow foam, of Junhui in winter and the coastline in May. 

She falls asleep with the curtains dancing beside her body like spirits.

  
  
  
  
  


Under the sun, the house comes alive, and Minghao with it; their foundations are intertwined like conductive metals; their magic feeds into each other. Sometimes the house takes more than it should, but it always gives back.

Minghao turns the radio on with a lazy flick of her wrist as she pads into the kitchen. The kettle fills with water, flames lick around its edges like a greedy child, and the vines hanging from the ceiling twist in their posts to say good morning. She greets them one by one, croons over the white-green shoots that have sprouted overnight, touches the base of each pot to soak it with just enough water to help them on their way.

Like most things in the house, the board hanging beside the fridge is charmed. It lists the tasks and the plants that need tending to each day. Minghao freezes before it, her fingers crushing the scent of rosemary into the air, palms gone sticky with it. 

_ Welcome the guest. _

She spins around seconds before the doorbell rings; a waterfall of kalimba notes; she hasn’t heard the sound in months. 

_ Who is it? _ she asks the gardenias, petals against her wrist. They whisper an excited sort of nonsense into her ear that is echoed by the roses and the oak trees pouring shadows through the salon. 

A snow storm is simmering on the doorstep. 

Minghao lets it inside.

“Hello,” says the stranger, hesitating on the threshold. Her hair falls cleanly to her shoulders like sheets of ice, glacier-blue to match her eyes. Despite the winter in her magic, she smiles warmly at Minghao. “I’m Soonyoung.”

“You’re very far from home,” Minghao comments. The kettle whistles keenly between them; she clicks her fingers to kill the flame.

Soonyoung watches her magic with searing intensity. “I have been further,” she says. “Is it alright if I stay?”

The sunflowers along the wall turn to face Soonyoung like a choir. Minghao pulls a second teacup from the cabinet and tells the bluebells to behave.

  
  
  
  
  


Any sense of decorum Soonyoung might have demonstrated in their first meal together quickly melts into a familiarity that Minghao can’t keep up with. She feels out of breath as she follows Soonyoung around her own garden, pointing at the horizon and the mouth of the forest like she is giving a lesson in the anatomy of her home; of herself. 

Soonyoung drinks everything in with wide eyes and ceaseless hands. She smells like snowfall but she moves like summer rain, and Minghao understands what is going to happen. 

Nobody that visits this place leaves without taking a part of her with them, and Soonyoung looks greedy. Like she would bite down on the cherry seed and forget to spit out the cyanide. 

Minghao is afraid to be around her after sunset, but she sets a place for her at the table every morning. She covers the jar of seawater with a blanket. Junhui would have words to say if he knew.

  
  
  
  
  


“Does it get lonely, living here by yourself?” 

Minghao hums and presses her fingers deeper into the soil. They have been gardening together every day for one month. Soonyoung pointed it out while they were eating breakfast. She sounded happy about it. 

“I’m not alone,” Minghao says. 

Strawberry plants explode from the soil like swans. Soonyoung beams and crouches down to watch it happen: life in fast forward. She is close enough for Minghao to feel her body, her magic, the ice-mint scent of her skin. The strawberries go a little haywire in the dirt and Soonyoung laughs, delighted. When she turns to face Minghao, her smile is easy but her eyes present a challenge. 

“Magic is no companion,” she says.

“And yet if I were to lose it, I would feel completely alone.”

Soonyoung builds a snowflake between the pad of her thumb and index finger. She turns it side to side, showing Minghao the incredible intricacy of it, the way it catches the sunlight. 

Then she crushes it. 

Minghao doesn’t understand the lesson, but she allows Soonyoung to lean in and kiss her, strawberry juice running between them like a secret. Minghao keeps her fingers in the soil for security, skin caked with the earth, knees pressing down and thighs pressing together as Soonyoung tugs on her hair, fingertips sparking with magic they shouldn’t be using on each other. 

She smiles when Minghao groans, and Minghao thinks about the sun being snuffed out in a snowstorm like a tea-candle. 

  
  
  
  
  


Summer is stolen away from Minghao, for Soonyoung demands more attention than the roses, and she draws twice as much blood. Minghao stands her ground when needs to, but it is not as often as she should. The plants soothe over her apologies when she forgets to feed them. The house rattles when it storms and Minghao feels every strike of lightning as keenly as the fingers Soonyoung plunges inside of her in the middle of the night. 

Everything is forgivable. 

Minghao leaves bruises with her teeth and soothes them with her tongue. Soonyoung freezes the bluebells because she likes how it turns them purple. The forest shudders under the weight of autumn and Soonyoung shudders against Minghao’s mouth.

The sand that had settled at the bottom of the jar becomes unstuck, and when Soonyoung asks Minghao why she holds onto everything so tightly, Minghao pushes her away. 

  
  
  
  
  


“Have you ever been north?” Soonyoung asks. 

They woke up to snow coating the garden. The sight of it made Minghao feel suffocated in a way that she can’t express without sinking a proverbial dagger into the heart of whatever they have between them.

“Once,” Minghao says, burrowing into the blankets. “When I was younger. I only passed through. Sun witches do not do well in such barrenness.”

Soonyoung drags her fingers down Minghao’s shoulder blades, exposing them to the air. “Yet here I am. A winter witch in your bed. What does that say about you?”

It says too much. Minghao has been a lesson in exposure and self preservation ever since Soonyoung turned up on her doorstep all those months ago, and she hasn’t learned a thing. In silence, she moves from the bed, comfortable and uncaring in her nudity as she walks across the room and splays her hands on either side of the window overlooking the garden. It takes a few seconds, but the house needs this as much as she does.

The room wavers around them, air fracturing with the heat burning from Minghao’s core, from the earth’s. Soonyoung watches the waterfall of melting ice pouring off the roof and down the other side of the glass with hard eyes. 

When Minghao opens the window, the breeze is warm, and the scales have tipped.

  
  
  
  
  


Soonyoung leaves on the eve of the Winter Solstice. She says that she has rituals to commit, but Minghao has seen the way she exists, has held her between her teeth and her palms, and though Soonyoung remains a frightening kind of mystery even after all this time, she can say for certain that patterns and rituals and commitment have no place in this woman’s life. 

It feels heavy, and it hurts, but Minghao lets her go. She doesn’t have a choice. From the fractured soil of a frozen-over greenhouse, she pries stinging nettles and boils them into a vial. She threads a white string through it and gives it to Soonyoung as a parting gift. 

“To remember you by?” Soonyoung laughs. “Very poetic of you.”

“To find me again,” Minghao corrects. 

“Wouldn’t I just return to the house?”

“I won’t be here. I’m going east.”

Soonyoung’s silver eyes go wide with understanding. She crouches down to put her hands in the snow left piled on the edges of the property. Shards of winter dance up into the air between them and melt into waves, suspended like puppets, lapping against an invisible barrier. Their insides glow blue and the way Soonyoung makes them crash into each other is both violent and achingly familiar. Minghao chokes on her laughter. She wishes Soonyoung would take a smaller part of her soul. But it is too late.

The snow melts the moment Soonyoung disappears from view, and Minghao almost misses it. 

  
  
  
  
  


In the sharp light of dawn in spring, the forest is half-forgotten, and the ocean is right where Minghao left it.

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/dygonilly)


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